LATFOR member Dilan calls its hearings a ‘farce’ (update)

Angry that state Senate Republicans acted quietly and unilaterally to add a seat to the body, the Democratic member of of the state task force charged with drawing new political lines called its process “a farce and a waste of time and money.”

Sen. Martin Malave Dilan, D-Brooklyn, asked from the start of LATFOR’s public hearings in July how many Senate districts would be created. He got no answer, and many groups — including Common Cause, which submitted a complete set of district lines — assumed the Senate would remain at 62 members.

Senate Republicans posted a legal analysis from their attorney Michael Carvin after 5 p.m. Friday saying there should be 63 Senate seats. Dilan and other Democrats have attacked the product — they say the GOP did it’s math “working backwards” and hopes to create another seat in Upstate New York where a Republican would have a chance at winning — but Dilan has never before been so harsh on LATFOR’s process as he was during a Tuesday afternoon hearing.

“The public has a right to know if we’re going to be drawing these lines based on 62 or any other number. I never got an answer to that question,” he said. “We had 14 weeks of hearings and I don’t think that anyone on this panel heard a word of anything the public said during the course of those 14 weeks.”

He said the Democrats’ “only hope” was for Gov. Andrew Cuomo to veto the lines LATFOR draws. The task force is controlled by Democrats who dominate the Assembly and Republicans who hold a slim majority in the Senate. Cuomo has joined good-government groups in criticizing LATFOR’s process, and vowed to veto “lines that are not drawn by an independent commission that are partisan.”

Senate Democrats have often attacked Republicans about redistricting, but the Democrats did nothing to change the process when they held the chamber majority in 2009 and 2010.

Sen. Mike Nozzolio, LATFOR’s Republican co-chair, said Carvin’s memo was an “appropriate analysis” of the state Constitution. He said it was posted when it was finished. Carvin’s law firm has a $3 million taxpayer-funded contract for legal work.

“It took time … he was asked to look at all constitutional and voting rights issues … this isn’t done on a piecemeal basis, it’s done on a comprehensive basis,” said Nozzolio, R-Seneca Falls. “The point is, the Constitution decides these issues. It’s not Senator Dilan, it’s not Senator Nozzolio, it’s the New York State Constitution.”

Already, individual legislators and their aides are being briefed on LATFOR’s preliminary recommendations for their districts. Nozzolio and Democratic co-chair Assemblyman Jack McEneny, D-Albany, said draft maps would be released to the public “hopefully” within two weeks. A new round of public hearings will be scheduled starting, “hopefully,” in January.

Update: Courtesy Kyle Hughes of NYSNYS, here’s some video of the exchange during the hearing, with comments after the meeting adjourned: